Hey What's Shakin!
Friday morning, I was just doing my normal everyday routine at work. It had been a pretty good day, sometimes Fridays can be frustrating, as people try to squeeze in last minute things before the weekend. But up until around 10:25, it was a fairly uneventful day.
Then I felt the floor start to move, there was stuff rattling in my office. My co-worker, who likes to end every sentence spoken to me with my name, said "What's going on Bill?" "You feelin that Bill?" "Yo, that's a damn earthquake Bill."
I waited a minute then I went out to the hallway outside my office. One of the nurses said "Do you think that was an earthquake?"
My answer? "I HOPE that was an earthquake."
They all laughed, but I was being honest. To me that was the best-case scenario. The building could have been crumbling down, maybe some of the bad guys got their hands on those WMD's. (Time to duck and cover?) Maybe the Good Lord had come to take me away.
Paranoid you say? What have I written on these pages so many times? If it can happen, it will happen.
Killer storms? Check. Pandemics? Check. Terrorist attacks? Check. Canadian forest fires that make it impossible to breathe in NY? Check
And now, earthquakes. Here in NY. There are a few reasons why I hadn't packed up and moved to Los Angeles back when I was younger, the obvious one being that I didn't want to be too far from my family and friends, another is that I probably couldn't afford to live there.
But also because they have earthquakes there. Same thing with San Francisco. I was getting ready to watch Game 3 of the 1989 World Series when I heard Al Michaels say "I think we're having an earthqua.." and the screen went blank.
Thankfully, Michaels and Tim McCarver weren't hurt, (Though those of us who stayed with ABC's coverage that night were treated to Michaels telling us, oh, every 6 seconds or so, that he had "lived the better part of 12 years in the San Francisco area.) but that was scary, and 63 people were killed.
The epicenter of Friday's quake was Lebanon, NJ, about 60 miles outside of Manhattan. The US Geological Survey estimated that 42 million of us felt the effects.
Thankfully, the damage appears to have been minimal, at least here in NY. I saw on Eyewitness News that some houses in Newark suffered structural damage that forced residents out. Obviously I feel for those folks.
But there were some LOL moments too.
We were celebrating Cultural Day at work, and while we were all having lunch around noon, all of our cell phones started beeping loudly. Over an hour and a half after all the fun had ended, we got a Public Safety Alert from NYS Emergency Management letting us know of the earthquake in NJ. As my friend Keri DeAngelo posted to FB.. "That would have been comforting if I was buried under rubble."
Sometimes ya gotta laugh.
Then right before 6, I was at my mother-in-law's house and the cabinets started to shake, rattle and roll again. She lives off a busy street, so a large truck going by could have the same effect, but I didn't see any trucks. Sure as hell, my social media started lighting up with people saying they felt the aftershock.
The original quake measured at 4.8. The aftershock was 4.0 and only lasted a couple of seconds. The morning quake lasted about 7 or 8 seconds. As of 5 PM on Saturday night, there have been no other aftershocks. So hopefully our long national nightmare is over.
On Monday, a large section of our fair nation will witness a Solar Eclipse, where the moon will come between the Earth and the Sun. Here in NYC, we will witness about 85% of the sun blocked.
The "Path of Totality," in addition to being the name of my upcoming album, also refers to the swath across North America which will see the moon cover the entirety of the sun. According to the maps I've consulted, the US cities in the Path of Totality* include Dallas, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Cleveland and Buffalo. Toronto and Montreal will be where our Canadian friends can see it.
I was lucky enough to have been on vacation for the last major solar eclipse back in August 2017. To me that was much ado about nothing, at least in my neck of the woods. It looked like just a hazy late August afternoon. Tara wanted me to keep Timmy in the house during the height of it, but I let him go run around our block with his friends like he did every day. Neither he or any of his pals looked up at the sun as none of them gave a crap about it. They just did what they do.
Tim has a meet on Monday that got pushed back to 5:30 as to protect the athletes and spectators. The Yanks also pushed their previously scheduled afternoon game back a couple hours.
The peak time for the eclipse here is 3:26, I don't get out of work till 4, so I'll have to check it out through a window.
And of course, it wouldn't be a Total Solar Eclipse without our share of tin-foil hat wearing crackpots spreading conspiracy theories, from the government using the eclipse to declare martial law, to those poor souls who think this is a sign from the Big Guy upstairs that the end of the world is upon us. I was always taught in my 12 years of Catholic school that God was going to be a lot more subtle when He decided to close up the shop as it were. A total solar eclipse that people have been talking about and planning to witness for years is not exactly "you know not the day nor the hour" since every news organization in the world has published the day and the hour to the second of when the sun will be blocked by the moon in any given part of the continent.
An earthquake in New Jersey on a random Friday in April though? Well, Michael Stipe put it best..
That's great it starts with an earthquake, birds, snakes and aeroplanes, Lenny Bruce is not afraid
-It's the End of the World as we Know it (and I feel Fine)-R.E.M.
COLLEGE BASKETBALL- Classic in the Women's Final Four
I'll admit I'm late to the party with the Women's NCAA Tournament. I've followed it through the media, but I haven't watched too many of the games. I caught a couple of Iowa's games, so I can say that I saw the best to ever do it, Caitlin Clark.
After my WM staff meeting, I caught the last quarter of UCONN-Iowa. I normally root for UCONN, even though I don't much care for their coach Geno Auriemma. Maybe I've been reading too many Phil Mushnick columns, but he just comes off as a pompous a$$ to me. I could be wrong about that, as again I admittedly haven't followed the women's game as much as I should.
But I've watched enough sporting events in my life to know a Marquee Matchup when I see one. And UCONN-Iowa lived up to it's billing
UCONN was led by Paige Bueckers, while Iowa had the aforementioned Caitlin Clark. The commentators were saying that neither of the stars played their best game, which is scary because from where I was sitting, they both looked pretty freakin awesome. Clark just broke Pistol Pete Maravich's all time NCAA scoring record. Some have suggested there should be an asterisk next to Clark's name since Maravich played before the advent of the 3 pointer. I'll leave that argument to others with more time on their hands, but one thing is fo'sho.. both Caitlin and the Pistol** could hit from anywhere. I mean, she fires up some shots from just over the half court line and made it look as easy as a lay-up. And she's just not content bombing away from no-man's (or woman's) land either, she's not afraid to take it to the hole. And she's got no issue giving up the rock either.
She can do it all.
As for the moving screen call at the end of the game that the commentators at ESPN were all bitching about, well, I hate to break it to ya, but that was the right call. And spare me the "you can't make that call in that situation" bull$h-t. If it's a moving screen at the beginning of the game, it's a moving screen at the end of the game. It sucks to have a call go against you in that situation, I get it. But if it's the right call, the ref has to make it. I hate it when they swallow the whistle.
I had written back during the pandemic that I watched ESPN's the Last Dance about the 90's Bulls and slo-mo'ed the Charles Smith debacle. I had gone 27 years insisting that Smith was hacked at least 3 times with nothing called. It turned out the first shot was cleanly blocked by Horace Grant, the second shot could have gone either way (I couldn't tell if Michael Jordan had gotten a piece of Smith's wrist), but Scottie Pippen clearly shoved Smith on the third shot and nothing was called. That was gutless officiating.
What happened the other night wasn't. Again it's a $hitty way to lose, but it was the right call.
As for today’s Championship game, South Carolina was quite simply the best team. They outscored Iowa in bench points 37-0 or something like that. When you have that much depth, you are hard to beat. All props to Dawn Staley and the National Champions.
As for the men..well, my brilliant first weekend and quarter of the second was all for naught. The only chance I had to win any $$$ was to have a NC State-Alabama final, which a) was very unlikely and b) outside of Raleigh and Tuscaloosa, a final nobody wanted.
Now, normally I'd be pulling for UCONN tomorrow night, being that unlike Geno Auriemma, I like coach Danny Hurley and in light of the committee screwing the Big East nine ways to (selection) Sunday, this would be a proverbial middle finger to those who thought only 3 Big East teams deserved an invite to the dance.
However, a Purdue win guarantees my dad finishes second, and my sister finishes third. And no, not my sister who knows a thing or two about college basketball either. This would be my other favorite sister, the one who used to pick 16 seeds to go to the Final Four. And if Purdue happened to be a 16 seed, she'd pick them to win the whole thing. I think one year she picked Purdue to win it all even though they didn't make the tournament***
So how can I root against my own family, especially Kris? She deserves to see her beloved Boilermakers raise the championship trophy. And I'll rest easy knowing that I picked more games right than anyone else in my pool. That, and a MetroCard, will allow me to take the subway.
And also, these are clearly the two best teams in the country, which nowadays seems it rarely happens in the NCAA Men's tournament. So we could have a down to the wire classic.
NBA: You Can't Randle the Truth..
My first reaction when I heard that Julius Randle was going to have season-ending shoulder surgery was anger at having been jerked around by the organization. For weeks, they had been saying that Randle was planning to come back in time for the playoffs if not sooner.
Of course the longer he was out, the more disingenuous that all sounded.
Then some of the guys on the FAN and other various talking heads, said the reason that the Knicks were saying that Randle could still come back was that he was rehabbing hard and he himself wasn't throwing in the towel. I could dig that, I believe Randle is a warrior and would move heaven and earth if he could to get back on the court. Especially with how well the team played after the trade with the Raptors.
But then I read Stephan Bondy's column in Friday's Post. Bondy confirmed that Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau had insisted several times that Randle was progressing.
What Thibs, and the rest of Knick management failed to disclose was that Randle had re-injured his shoulder during a contact session a little over a month ago.
According to Bondy's column, Randle told Bleacher Report, "my $hit wasn't stable. I felt like I was in the same state when I first dislocated it, and it's been an uphill battle ever since."
I'm sorry folks, but this gives me flashbacks to when Jacob deGrom first hurt his arm back in 2021. To that point he was having a 1968 Bob Gibson vintage year, then he left a game with arm pain. Sandy Alderson kept insisting all summer that deGrom had no structural damage to his arm, that it was simply "inflammation."
Then in the first week of September, with the Mets hopelessly out of the race (again) Alderson admitted that deGrom had a tear in his elbow (though he referred to it as a sprain). That sure sounded like structural damage to me.
I understand why you might downplay an injury around the trade deadline, so that you don't get fleeced trying to replace an injured player, but why do it after that? All you are going to do is hurt your credibility with your fan base.
Now, Leon Rose the Knick GM has pushed almost all the right buttons, even moves I've criticized him for have turned out well so far. But he has taken an awful lot of heat for not talking to the media, only sitting for interviews with MSG's in-house media. This whole affair isn't going to help him in that regard. He has to hope Randle comes back next season, plays well and stays healthy. It would also help if OG Abanouby could figure out how to stay on the court. Otherwise this act of avoiding the press is going to get real old real quick. And the fans will be the ones calling for his scalp.
On the off chance that some of these weirdos are correct and the solar eclipse is truly the end, it was nice knowing ya.
Otherwise, we'll be back next week.
Stay Safe
Wear the damn glasses (to paraphrase the great Ed Robinson) if you are going to watch the eclipse.
and Have a Great Week
*Am I the only one that hears Path of Totality in the voice of the late legendary Yankee Stadium PA Announcer Bob Sheppard? The voice of God as Reggie Jackson referred to him as.
** I highly recommend Mark Kriegel's biography of Pete Maravich, Pistol. Kriegel's written three biographies: Namath, Pistol and the Good Son about Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini, and they were all excellent. But Pistol was fantastic. After I finished reading it, I spent more time I care to admit on YouTube looking for Pete Maravich clips.
*** Just kidding (I think)
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